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V.D. Hanson

Gilded class warriors

Now, that paradox has continued right off the bat in the second term. In the State of the Union, Obama once more went after “the few” and “the wealthiest and the most powerful,” whom he blasted as the “well-off and the well-connected” and the “billionaires with high-powered accountants.”

Like clockwork, the president then jetted to West Palm Beach for yet another golfing vacation at one of the nation’s priciest courses, replete with lessons from a $1,000-an-hour golf pro to improve the presidential putting. …

Today, lots of liberal grandees attack the rich and yet do their best to act and live just like them.

Take financial speculator and leftist billionaire George Soros, who is back in the news. Soros is able to fund several progressive think tanks that go after the 1 percent because he is the most successful financial buccaneer of the age — notorious as “the man who broke the Bank of England” and who was convicted of insider trading in France. The Soros family investment firm’s most recent speculating coup was betting against the Japanese yen. That made Soros $1.2 billion in just three months — enough capitalist lucre to keep funding Media Matters and other attack-dog progressive groups for years to come. …

How odd that hip Facebook just confessed that it paid no federal or California State income taxes for 2012 on its $1.1 billion in pre-tax profits from its U.S. operations alone. Odder still, Facebook will probably receive a federal-tax refund of about $429 million. Apparently Facebook’s “well connected” found some “high-powered accountants” to write off their stock options as a business expense.

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I don’t understand how Obama and his cronies can live with themselves, considering the degree to which they criticize others for doing just what they themselves do. Do they believe what they say? If they believe what they say, then they’re putting themselves above those they criticize, and not applying their own standards to themselves. And if they don’t believe what they say, then they’re cynically manipulating gullible others for their own benefit, while the rest of the country suffers for their dishonesty.

How odd that hip Facebook just confessed that it paid no federal or California State income taxes for 2012 on its $1.1 billion in pre-tax profits from its U.S. operations alone. Odder still, Facebook will probably receive a federal-tax refund of about $429 million. Apparently Facebook’s “well connected” found some “high-powered accountants” to write off their stock options as a business expense.

Is this “got payed by the federal government for existing”, or “payed more early on than it ended up owing, and is getting the difference refunded”?

I don’t understand how Obama and his cronies can live with themselves, considering the degree to which they criticize others for doing just what they themselves do. Do they believe what they say? If they believe what they say, then they’re putting themselves above those they criticize, and not applying their own standards to themselves. And if they don’t believe what they say, then they’re cynically manipulating gullible others for their own benefit, while the rest of the country suffers for their dishonesty.